Hilda Borko

Cognition and Improvisation: Differences in Mathematics Instruction by Expert and Novice Teachers

This study investigates the nature of pedagogical expertise by comparing the planning, teaching, and postlesson reflections of three student teachers (two secondary and one elementary) with those of the cooperating teachers with whom they were placed. Participants were observed teaching mathematics for 1 week of instruction and were interviewed prior to and following each lesson. Differences in the thinking and actions of these experts and novices were analyzed by perceiving teaching both as a complex cognitive skill and as improvisational performance Novices showed more time-consuming, less efficient planning, encountered problems when attempts to be responsive to students led them away from scripted lesson plans, and reported more varied, less selective postlesson reflections than experts. These differences were accounted for by the assumptions that novices’ cognitive schemata are less elaborate, interconnected, and accessible than experts’ and that their pedagogical reasoning skills are less well developed. We offer several recommendations for student teaching based on this analysis.

Students' Conceptions of Reading and Their Reading Experiences in School

The Elementary School Journal Volume 86, Number 5 ? 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 00oo 13-5984/86/8605-0002

In Search of an Interdisciplinary Collaborative Design for Studying Teacher Education.

01o.00 Teaching children to read is one of the major goals of our nations elementary schools. In fact, many parents, teachers, and students equate success in the primary grades with success in learning to read. At the same time, some children are more successful at learning to read in school than others. Understanding the reasons for this differential success might help teachers and other educational decision makers design reading programs that will help more students achieve higher levels of reading proficiency than is presently the case. In this paper, we discuss some of the data obtained in an intensive study of the teaching and learning of reading in the four second-grade classrooms of one elementary school. The study was designed to address the question: What makes a difference in childrens success at learning to read in school? We focus on the under-

Learning to Teach Hard Mathematics: Do Novice Teachers and Their Instructors Give Up Too Easily?.

Abstract This paper describes the efforts of two researchers, an anthropologist, and a psychologist, to conduct collaborative research in teacher education. Drawing on 10 years of work together and literature on interdisciplinary collaboration, we discuss the issues we faced to remain true to our own disciplines and simultaneously contribute to research on teaching and teacher education. The article emphasizes: the importance of what each discipline insists upon; the role of compromise; and the value of interdisciplinary perspectives for research on teaching. Our latest work together, a study of novice mathematics teachers, is used to illustrate the potential of our approach.